Here’s The Biggest Moves 20 MSP 500 Executives Made In The Last Year To Drive Success

As part of the CRN MSP 500 we asked top executives to describe the single, most significant change their managed service provider company made in the last year to drive success. Here’s what 20 had to say.

Changing Times

Demand for managed IT services has soared in recent years and that has generated growth for a lot of managed service providers.

MSP executives, consequently, have had to make many decisions to meet the needs of the rapidly evolving market, facing such questions as where to invest resources, how many people to hire and with what skills, what services to offer and what types of customers to serve.

As part of the CRN 2023 Managed Service Provider 500 project, we asked executives at the MSPs on this year’s list the question: What is the single biggest/most significant change your company has made in the past year to drive success?

Here’s what 20 MSP executives had to say.

3rd Element Consulting

Dawn Sizer, CEO

Mechanicsburg, Pa.

Dropping smaller, less profitable companies, or companies not willing to invest in themselves to focus on those who are.

Advizex

C.R Howdyshell, President

Independence, Ohio

Growing our team to increase our expertise in the MS space. Focusing on having everything as a service: Security Operations-as-a-Service, Monitoring-as-a-Service, Network Operations Center-as-a-Service].

BASE Solutions

Atul Bhagat, President and CEO

Tysons Corner, Va.

We have invested a significant amount in marketing this year, which we hope will further enable growth into 2023.

Broadview Networks

Michael Orloff, President

Winnipeg, Manitoba

We put a lot of investment into building our cybersecurity practice to complement our managed services. This includes assessments, remediation and a recurring managed security offering.

CMA Technology Solutions

Chad LeMaire, Chairman and CEO

Baton Rouge, La.

The single most important change that our company has made in the past year to drive success is making a conscious effort to be more market driven, listen to our customers, and working to enhance our managed services offerings – not only today, but in the future with an emphasis on cybersecurity.

DirectDefense

Jim Broome, President and CTO

Englewood, Colo.

The most significant change DirectDefense made in the past year to drive success was investing in headcount and sales outreach within the Sales Department to drive awareness of our services during a time of renewal for many of our clients.

Entara

Pamela Diaz, President and CEO

Chicago

The biggest change Entara has made in the past year is making our cybersecurity standards non-negotiable and reorienting our solutions to be security focused. As an eXtended Service Provider, we impose non-negotiable security controls and benchmarks for ourselves and our clients, leverage lessons learned through thousands of hours of digital forensics incident response (DFIR) work, and do not deliver managed services without security services.

Fuse Networks

Travis Thom, CEO

Tukwila, Wash.

Vendor consolidation as they invest in our success.

GreenPages

Ron Dupler, CEO

Portsmouth, N.H.

We have made strategic investments in our cybersecurity practice. In particular, our DevSecOps/Site Reliability Engineering practice is growing rapidly due to pent-up demand from clients grappling with the ever-present talent gap that is impacting their digital transformation initiatives.

IRIS Solutions

Reggis Stevens, CEO

Charlotte, N.C.

Given the 2022 labor market challenges, offshoring our help desk allowed us to increase our head count and response times while avoiding significant price increases for our customers. This has greatly increased customer satisfaction and allowed us to increase customer retention. Moreover, offshoring has freed up our onshore resources to take on more proactive and innovative improvement projects.

Logicalis U.S.

Jon Groves, CEO

Bloomfield Hills, Mich.

The biggest change our company has made in the past year to drive success has been focusing on adaptation. Whether that’s adjusting to the current supply chain issues or working through the current talent shortages, we have focused on adapting to drive success, just as we enable our customers to do each day.

Matrix Integration

Brenda Stallings, CEO

Jasper, Ind.

Our company has created two business units with one of them strategically focusing on managed services.

Novacoast

Paul Anderson, CEO

Wichita, Kan.

Data-driven decision making, automation and proprietary tooling for big data analytics.

NWN Carousel

Jim Sullivan, CEO

Exeter, R.I.

We have supported making a hybrid work environment successful by providing unified communications, security, devices, and workspaces that help companies maintain a competitive advantage, drive business, and retain and recruit employees.

Park Place Technologies

Chris Adams, President and CEO

Cleveland, Ohio

Investment in professional services (globally) including ITAD, Remote Hands [services], staff augmentation, data migration, wireless transformation, data center relocation [and] physical discovery.

Quatrro Business Support Services

CM Sharma, Chairman and CEO

Marietta, Ga.

We have been making additional investments in upgrading our existing proprietary tools already in the market (Cloud InterConnect and Xport) to meet the evolving demands of the industry, especially when paired with our managed services. Additionally, we have continued to make investments in the past year (and will continue to do so in 2023) in acquisitions that will expand the reach and depth of our service offerings and expertise.

Solvere One

Reagan Roney, Chief Experience Officer

Dulles, Va.

Building teams to focus on solutions. Teams for projects, Teams for service, Teams for consulting. No longer does it fall on one person.

TrueIT

Zac Paulson, CEO

Fargo, N.D.

The biggest change we made was to separate our Dynamics division into its own company, which is now a channel-focused software consulting firm, TruNorth Dynamics. This has allowed our MSP, TrueIT, to focus on becoming the absolute best MSP it can be.

Vintage IT Services

Sheryl Hanes, President

Austin, Texas

Adopted the TruMethods Model in 2020, but now it‘s really starting to show the benefits. Our NA/vCIO role is the division that is growing rapidly as a result of the new model. SOC services and NOC Services and Cloud.

Wachter Technology Solutions

Brian Sloan, CEO

Mount Laurel, N.J.

Expansion of our project managers and field workforce to address the increasing needs of our clients has been key to our success. We have also invested in ISO27001 to ensure the highest level of security for our clients. We have also invested heavily in a new customer experience center that will showcase real-life use of emerging technologies.